unite union and Labour party

A lot of government workers don't vote for the labour party. I work in the Home Office and was in the vast minority of people voting Labour. Most of us lived in its cosmopolitan heartlands.

Wow - that is really weird, as most of London (heartland) voted Labour.
Wow - that is all I can say.
That has totally blown me away.
Blimy.

Unless the polling in London was wrong the opposite way to the rest of the country most did not vote labour in London

As for the original point, labour isn't really a pressure group at the moment, but it might be since McLusky can easily get his own way, of he doesn't then labour will really start to lack funds. Of they don't go left enough they lose the VERY substantial unite funding, don't go fast enough back right and they don't get back their business funding, they will be say in the middle with about half the cash the Tories have, and of course they benefit massively from short cash.

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Well I'm no expert but most of central london now has Labour MPs (outer Torys)...

See map:
http://cdn.londonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/map211.png

So I'm not sure we're talking about the same election.
You do mean the 2015 general election?

Yes, but we use FPTP, in those Labour seats the Tory support will have been stronger relatively than the Labour support in the Tory seats, and vice versa, more Tory support in the Tory seats relative to Labour support in the Labour seats. Annoyingly the full analysis of the result still doesn't seem to be out, so go look at the polls. Most were putting Labour in the mid 40s, which isn't "most" and as said, the only way that we could reasonably say that Labour had most would be if the pollsters were wrong in the opposite way to the rest of the country, i.e. they had con too high and lab too low rather than the con too low and lab too high everywhere else.

the inner london liberal seats fell to labour, not tory. I still think it holds. The mass of labour voters in london work in nhs, civil service, teachers, local councils etc, and that explains why labour still won some seats.
If there were ZERO government employees I would suspect that labour would get zero seats.

So you're suggesting that in London about 50% of the electorate in work work in the public sector and they alone vote Labour, meanwhile the other 50%ish are in the private sector and vote everything but? I think you're slightly deleuded there, less than 21% of Londoners work in the public sector...

the stats lie. Loads of companies such as CGI (it solutions) are totally wrapped up into government contracts...This will also be the same with local councils Waste Management (some pretty big FTSE companies involved)..
Or put it another way 45% of the entire UK GDP is government (eg everything from soldiers to road sweepers).
You could argue that every student at university is in the public sector too...(and GCSE and A level student voters as well - also often more labour the tory)

Since when could GCSE and A level students (well, AS and a chunk of A2) vote?
And of that 45% how much is going to the utilities companies?
How much of that is going into welfare, particularly pensions?
How much to pharmaceutical companies?
How much is going overseas for various hardware, whether it be military, medical, etc?
How much is going towards fuel?
How much of the Transport budget is going to private companies?

Just shy 20% of the budget is in the pension pot; about 8% is spent servicing our debts; another 8% in welfare; 0.7% of GDP in foreign aid; 3.2bn goes into Defence R&D, that all goes into the private sector...across the Atlantic. Massive swathes of that 45% go into private hands not via employment, almost a third for pensions, interest and welfare alone, with very little public sector employment there.

Figures from back in 2006 give London as about 16-17% Manufacturing, transport and infrastructure (independent of the public sector), financial, business and other services as about 23%,
hotels, restaurants and retail as about 10%, public sector just under 20% and what's left. Broken down even further in the appendix.
I'd also like to say that I expect the Labour lead over the Tories among the young probably isn't as big as you would think.

You might be right.
YEah 16 years can't vote - sorry my mistake (should be though, it is really immoral that they can't).

But A level students often can as do University students (both in public sector). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I still feel the core labour voter is a public sector worker (including network rail)... I mean its pretty obvious - more public spending and higher taxes only benefits government workers.... You'd be a fool not to vote labour if you are a teacher or nurse or civil servant, its a no-brainer

Why is it immoral that 16&17 can't vote? Is it not, by extension, immoral that there is anybody who cannot vote?
And not all A level can, only some, assuming most general elections are in May only about a third
And this arguing that those in education are in the public sector are laughable, who is paying for my being at uni? Who owns said uni?
And justify for me two things that you suggest:
1) more public spending and higher taxes benefits those in the public sector
2) more public spending and higher taxes benefit nobody else
I can think of plenty of ways for both to be falsehoods

Oh, and while you're at it justify why only labour can possibly benefit the public sector. Where would you put yourself politically? Labour, or even further left?

Norway makes its money from high tax on oil.
Norway would be foolish not to be ultra-left wing on oil.

However, a country that makes money out of the capitalist system
is in a well dodgy position.

I don't have an answer, sometimes it best to be very left wing and other times very right wing.

I guess no party in the UK can cope with such swings, but perhaps that is the future.

I have felt for a long time that the Labour party has basically become a pressure group for government employees to get bigger wages.

If you think about it, about 30% of all workers work for the government, I would not be surprised to find that getting on for 80% of those employees vote Labour (eg civil service, teachers, medics, council workers, police, fire)

That 30% roughly equates to Labour's share of the poll.

How do we go about getting Labour a party that anyone can vote for rather then a pressure group for government workers.

I

the stats lie. Loads of companies such as CGI (it solutions) are totally wrapped up into government contracts...This will also be the same with local councils Waste Management (some pretty big FTSE companies involved)..
Or put it another way 45% of the entire UK GDP is government (eg everything from soldiers to road sweepers).
You could argue that every student at university is in the public sector too...(and GCSE and A level student voters as well - also often more labour the tory)

So pensioners vote Labour?

Why would a public sector worker vote Labour over Tory? I didn't see anything in the last manefestos which said Labour would make public sector workers better off relative tot he Tories. If anything, due to the Tory pledge on raising the higher rate threshold to £50k, the offer was better from the Tories.

In terms of manifestos, Labour is the party of public spending. They love it. They spend money on public spending even when there isn't money to spend on public spending (their manifesto suggested as much, with almost no cuts).

The Conservatives, by contrast, try to spend much less on public services. They froze public sector pay and cut around a million jobs from the public sector and plan more. Most public service employees are nowhere near the upper tax bracket, so that doesn't affect them, but losing their jobs would.

The reality is that only a small proportion more vote Labour than Conservative, but for purely selfish reasons the Conservative manifesto was the one which put their jobs at risk.

In terms of manifestos, Labour is the party of public spending. They love it. They spend money on public spending even when there isn't money to spend on public spending (their manifesto suggested as much, with almost no cuts).

The Conservatives, by contrast, try to spend much less on public services. They froze public sector pay and cut around a million jobs from the public sector and plan more. Most public service employees are nowhere near the upper tax bracket, so that doesn't affect them, but losing their jobs would.

The reality is that only a small proportion more vote Labour than Conservative, but for purely selfish reasons the Conservative manifesto was the one which put their jobs at risk.